AtDtDA(28): Ssagan

[Dave Monroe]

"Kit had almost gotten used to riding Kirghiz horses ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 785)


"Kirghiz horses"

The Adayev Kirghiz ponies are late in maturing because they require
five years for full development....

http://www.equinekingdom.com/breeds/ponies/adayev_kirghiz.htm

The least attractive to look at in Turkestan is the Kirghiz horse,
which is small, powerful, and strong-maned...

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Nomads.html


"one reindeer, pure white"

Cf. ...

"Some were stimulated by the accompanying radiation ..." (p. 784)

Valkoinen peura (1952)

A newly wed woman goes to the local shaman to get some help with her
lovelife, but instead gets turned into a white reindeer vampire....

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045283/

http://www.classicmovies.com/cm/film_detail.asp?film_id=218


Ssagan

In Burkhanism, a Russian religious movement that flourished among the
indigenous people of Russia's Gorno Altai region between 1904 and the
1930s, Ak-Burkhan ("White Burkhan") is a deity who is depicted as an
old man with white hair, a white coat, and white headgear, who rides a
white horse, and is possibly analogous to the Mongolian "white old
man," Tsagan Ebugen. The Buryat language (or Buriat) is a Mongolic
language spoken by the Buryats of Siberia. [6]

Sacred white reindeer parallels Native American's reverence for white buffalos.

And the white stag as Christ-symbol in Renaissance paintings.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_785

Buriat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryat_language
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=MNB

Tsagan

Burkhanism or Ak Jang is a new religious movement that flourished
among the indigenous people of Russia's Gorno Altai region (okrug)
between 1904 and the 1930s. Czarist Russia was suspicious of the
movement's potential to stir up native unrest and perhaps involve
outside powers. The Soviet authorities ultimately suppressed it for
fear of its potential to unify Siberian Turkic peoples under a common
nationalism.

Originally millenarian, charismatic and anti-shamanic, the Burkhanist
movement gradually lost most of these qualities--becoming increasingly
routine, institutionalized (around a hierarchy of oral epic singers),
and accommodating itself to the pre-existing Altaian folk religion. It
exists today in several revival forms.

[...]

Ak-Burkhan ("White Burkhan)--depicted as an old man with white hair, a
white coat, and white headgear, who rides a white horse. Possibly
analogous to the Mongolian "white old man," Tsagan Ebugen. A symbol of
good fortune.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhanism#Deities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhanism

Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

http://www.carlsagan.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
http://www.planetary.org/about/founders/carl_sagan.html